Eric Vallet

Professor

Phone : (33)1.40.97.74.83Mail : Eric.Vallet@parisnanterre.fr

Research interests

The thematic axe on which my research has been developed in close collaboration with Michel Kreutzer, Laurent Nagle and a number of foreign specialists, is that of Acoustic Preferences in Female Songbirds. We chose the common canary as a model for this research. This species has shown to be an ideal model for pinpointing, within complex songs, vocalizations having an important sexual value, neuronal substrates involved in the emitter's and the receiver's discrimination abilities and also peripheral restraints at various levels of the emitter's acoustic-respiratory apparatus. Thanks to recent advances on this model, numerous collaborations have been carried out, notably with Roderick Suthers (University of Bloomington, USA) and Manfred Gahr (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands), in order to test the legitimacy of certain of our observations in other songbird species and to isolate the physiological mechanisms involved in these vocalizations. I have also recently found an interest in the common canary's social status in relation to mate choice, using behavioral, hormonal, and vocal indicators. Collaborations